No Rest for the Wicked
by Poor Little Match Girl
Summary: Things are not always what they seem, especially in a world of desire and dreams. The Labyrinth is changing and crumbling in the wake of a mysterious beast, when a 16yearold Toby returns to rediscover things long forgotten. Rating subject to change!
1. A Window, Again

**No Rest for the Wicked**

**Written By and in Collaboration with:** _Poor Little Match Girl_ and _A Clever Ruse_

_Disclaimer: I don't own or associate with Labyrinth or the Jim Henson Company in any way form or fashion. ;-;_

**Chapter 1: A Window, Again**

Oh, the sweet sound of a slamming door. That was what Toby loved to hear. The slamming of a door meant a number of things, though the favorite of the fair-haired boy, ripe with age at sixteen since the last November, was the stoppage of unwelcome noises - the kind that intruded on his personal revelry, such as the harpy-like shrieking and carrying on of his mother. Though it hadn't always been so, he drew satisfaction from her distress weekly, if not daily, at whatever it was he'd purposefully done to release the furies, until his ears began to ring and Toby determined it to be the opportune moment to slam a door or two.

However, tonight it was different. Tonight she had struck a nerve.

Age, that dreaded thief in the night who steals the gold from maiden's hair, had apparently also robbed Toby's mother of her patience for fairy tales, especially when said stories are delivered from the lips of an almost-grown girl. Ever since his older step-sister, Sarah, had her…episode when he was just a baby, Toby's mother had become an avid armchair psychologist, filling the precious space of their bookshelves with thick textbooks mapping the psyche. Sarah and her stepmother had a very Cinderella-esque relationship, but with fewer fairy godmothers and quite a bit more volatile confrontation. When Sarah came of legal age, she moved out by both her own choice and Toby's mother's influence. As he grew older, Toby gained his mother's intolerance early, resenting her for the loss of the sister he'd become so close to in recent years following a myriad of letters and phone calls. Along with this shift of favor and behavior, Toby had the pleasure of becoming the sole subject of Karen's amateur analyses. The number of chances open for said analyses per week were roughly equivalent to the number of times Toby slammed a door in the span of that week, which was unsettlingly often.

As the banshee-like cry faded into the distance and its stinging echo retreated down the stairs, the conquering silence was finalized with the slam of Toby's bedroom door. He disregarded what little he carried to school onto the floor of his room, then plopping down on his bed, the old frame of which shook with a defiant creak even under the boy's lean form. Laying back, he intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms, then settling them on the back of his head as he reclined.

"Not as if this is the worst I've done, you old goblin," the disgruntled teenager muttered to himself, though this be redundant description. To say that Toby Williams was somewhat of a goblin himself would be a gross understatement. With a school criminality document the length of _The Art of War_, young Toby was the type of guy that teenage girls deem "bad boy" and other boys fantasized about murdering in a variety of creative ways. After all, when Toby wasn't getting into some sort of fight, he was 'unintentionally' gaining the attentions of every teenage girl within a ten mile radius of the pristine private campus to which he was enrolled (temporarily, at this rate). Truth be told, Toby had a horrible time with normal dating and rarely even showed interest - a fact that was beginning to catch up with him as his social life teetered on the edge of abandonment.

His olive green gaze traveled lazily from poster to desk to scattered drawings in the messy room. Toby's eyes fell finally upon the window seat which he never used for anything more than storage, due in large part to his belief that every flat surface, including the floor, collects to comprise the largest shelf in the house. Short, fat, tall, and long books of every kind, though all bound in leather, littered the cushions and surrounding floor. A small hand-mirror his sister had left caught the infant moonlight that filtered through the wide, curving window. The mirror cast a bright reflection across Toby's narrow features, contorted slightly with frustration and graced by a light blush. For a moment, it might have seemed that his eyes had taken on an impossible golden hue, but the shimmer was fleeting. Toby barely blinked at the sudden glare. If anyone was used to light - it was Toby.

Come to think of it, Toby had always seen lights. He couldn't recall ever being without the lights that followed him around in shapes. They seemed to float in the air - he could even touch them, move them around and fit them together in glowing mosaics. At times they would pulse lightly for a moment before fading and being replaced by another, differently colored and unique. He wasn't sure of their true function or origin, and had spent long hours wondering about the lights but never speaking of them. He was sure that his mother would think he'd gone insane, the same accusation she'd pushed his sister away with, and probably attribute said spiral into madness to the music he listened to and video games he played. Toby didn't dare to mention them, even in passing. What seemed like an eternity ago, when he hadn't grown tall enough to hit his head on open kitchen cabinet doors yet, he had referred to them once or twice, no more than one might mention something as natural as breathing. Met with a stale silence or an odd expression, he had learned to keep the lights to himself. Still, they remained with him, almost like guardians.

Now, they acted not as guardians. Now they were tools used to fight his mother's incessant probing. Toby's breathing was heavy and shakily, consciously controlled. His fingers acted first, flying into the air and grasping greedily at the lights. Thoughts flooded his mind - wishes echoing the same desperate sentiment. He wished and wished that he were anywhere - anywhere but here, stewing in his own personal hell, as Karen's words repeated like a broken record in his head. _Only want attention. Useless. Malicious. Irrational. Just. Just. Just. Just. Only. Nothing._ Toby furiously arranged the lights, moving them in every direction as they glided effortlessly toward him, placing themselves within arm's reach, ready to receive their canvas. They began to pulse. If Toby were not caught up in his own wish and mental flight, he might have noticed that the lights were pulsing stronger than they ever had before. The vibrations seemed to affect the surrounding air in minute fractions, almost creating waves of sound confused with the vibrant colors. He pieced them together, gathering the shapes and melding them into groups until they came into one. The light grew, and grew until it consumed all sight and mind, flooding the world with Toby's desperation.

_I wish...anywhere but here._


	2. A Place to Forget

**No Rest for the Wicked**

**Written By and in Collaboration with:** _Poor Little Match Girl_ and _A Clever Ruse_

_Disclaimer: I don't own or associate with Labyrinth or the Jim Henson Company in any way form or fashion. ;-;_

**Note:** If you haven't re-read Chapter 1: A Window, Again, it has been revised to clear up a few inconsistencies. Before you continue on to this chapter, _goooo back, while you stiiiiill can!_

**Chapter 2: A Place to Forget**

Toby felt his stomach turn. The sickening sensation he felt was akin to the feeling you have when you estimate one step too many on a dark stairway, and the dark surprise it instills in you in such a short amount of time. In a rush of silence, he collapsed onto the ground. The fall was, for the most part, cushioned as his body was met with a spongy, sticky resistance.

Toby meant to open his eyes, but found that they were already open. Despite this fact, it was dark.

If there was one thing that was almost completely absent from the life of Toby Williams, it was darkness.

The lights that had always guarded him had faded away with the all-encompassing white noise of before, without a trace or outline of their ever having _been_ at all. Abandoned, the wide-eyed Toby scrambled to his knees. Sucking in a quick breath of cold, murky air, he clenched his teeth. His entire frame was tense with a growing sense of panic. Groping about the pitch, he found a wall of the same waxy material as the floor of the unfathomable chamber that the boy had found within a few moments of rustling and terrible uncertainty.

"Am I blind?!" Toby's voice was shaking heavily, never surpassing a whisper for fear of who or what might...or worse, might _not_ be listening. Where was he? What had happened to the lights?

"You might be dead," came a young voice almost level in tone with Toby's from the far corner of the chamber. As the echo bounced from wall to wall, one could observe that the chamber sounded small in width and tall in height. However, the fair-haired boy was far too busy losing his footing while yelping with surprise in an almost embarrassingly high pitch to remark on the accuracy of echo-location. He was scarcely upright when a steely blue light was brought into the chamber following a series of shuffling noises and a light grating sound. Toby's eyes adjusted almost immediately, allowing them to roam wildly until they fell upon the source of the peculiar light. A thin, twisting stick served as the match for the flame that ate at its point. Bearing the match with long, thin fingers was a dark-haired boy, close in age to Toby, whose skin appeared bright blue in the strange, dim illumination. The only differing hue came from the pale golden glint of two small metal hoops that adorned the cartilage of one ear uncovered by his messy black hair and the pristine white bandages that covered his left eye and forehead.

"Who are you?" Toby attempted to demand but settled short at nervously inquiring, struggling to keep from stumbling over his words and save himself from sounding more ridiculous or afraid in apparently mixed company. His eyes darted back and forth from the blue flame to the stranger's face.

"My name's Rem," replied the other boy, still as a statue save for the movements of his lips. Coaxing another small, unsteady groan from Toby, the strange boy moved forward with alarming speed, halting abruptly when his nose was an inch or two from Toby's. Toby barely had time to flinch before he found himself looking into twin red irises, squinting and turning his head when the proximity made his eyes sore.

"What is your name? Or have you forgotten?" The other boy continued, shadowing Toby's evasive movements.

"Toby," he replied, giving Rem a push, wondering if he'd ever heard of personal space.

"Where am I? What is this place and what are you doing here?"

Impervious to one of Toby's most frequent shifts in mood from confusion to irritability, Rem tilted his head to one side, fluidly regaining his stance and following Toby with the light as he began to paw the walls cautiously to the right.

"An oubliette." Rem grinned, flashing an unnaturally sharp row of teeth. Toby felt a shiver up his spine. The waxy chamber was dank and well-like, though there seemed to be no opening or end to the ceiling above...assuming there was a ceiling.

"An oubliette?" Toby echoed, tearing his eyes away from Rem's mouth long enough to seek out his eyes, careful to remain vigilant in case the boy or creature who, in Toby's mind, was becoming less and less reminiscent of a human with every minute Toby looked. His expression suggested that Rem might have suggested that he'd go rather well with potatoes and pecan pie rather than given him a frustratingly vague answer. Still, Toby was afraid what he might discover if he looked too hard, but immediately eliminated the thought of looking away.

"Yes, an oubliette - a noose, a trap, a dungeon, a cell, a hold, a pit, a vault, a prison, a catacomb, a cavern, a cave, a place...to forget," Rem finished in one breath, taking the match in his other hand. His fingernails were nearly black and filed down to ragged stubs by chewing and grinding. His slender fingers seemed eerily elongated - a trick of the light, Toby rationalized.

Opening his mouth to reply with another of the pressing questions that plagued his mind, Toby suddenly stopped, recoiling back to the wall and standing up straight as if something had struck him.

"Oubliette…" He repeated it softly under his breath, his gaze falling to the ground for the second time as the world rung in his head. The chamber was made of what looked like wax from which an almost acidic liquid oozed.

Toby placed his hands on the sides of his head, as if trying to block out some invisible force that was keeping him from remembering something that seemed so crucial to the present…something that tugged at his thoughts and memory but failed to come through the haze that drifted about the Oubliette.

"That word…it means something…" Toby furrowed his brow.

"Thinking here will only drive the oubliette deeper into the Labyrinth," Rem interjected with more forward thought than impatience. Within the short span of time Toby had to collect his attentions upon the one elusive memory that threatened to obsess him, Rem had scurried as silently as an insect and found his way once more well into Toby's personal bubble and seized Toby's wrist in his unpleasantly cool grasp. Toby parted his lips once more to prepare for protest, jerking back a bit before receiving another jerk forward in return and a flash of a smug grin as the shadows created by the blue flame of the twisted, half-spent match danced across Rem's features when he turned toward the wall. Rem then patted a hollow sounding section of the waxy wall and knocked on it three times. The outline of an impossibly small door emerged from the spongy wall. The little doorway began to expand, creaking and groaning loudly with the sound of a growing tree - though trees normally grow with such steadiness that it is impossible to hear. When it reached Rem's height, the door halted its growth spurt and swung open before the two.

Strangely, a calm that was pregnant with anticipation of even stranger events washed over Toby, creating some semblance of defense for his sanity. The overwhelming weirdness of his current predicament helped numb him temporarily to the chaotic confusion of his thoughts. A tiny smile spawned by delirium twitched at the corner of Toby's mouth but disappeared shortly.

"Come on, I've found you so I'm getting you out. If you don't come with me, something else will find you," Rem said, finally releasing Toby from his grasp before ducking into the doorway that seemed to groan softly like a wide, dark mouth with the nearly-extinguished match.

This, Toby decided, was not very reassuring.


End file.
